The present invention relates to an apparatus for the storage and retrieval of large volumes of test tubes.
Nowadays, in the context of laboratory automation systems used for handling test tubes containing samples of biological material, the need is increasingly felt to have suitably refrigerated warehouses within the system itself in which the analyzed biological samples can be stored for a more or less long period, so as to make them available to the system again, when needed, to repeat the analysis by the modules connected to the automation.
Patent application MI2012A002011 by the same Applicant describes an apparatus for automatically depositing, storing and retrieving samples of biological material in/from a refrigerated warehouse using two distinct static robots.
Disadvantageously, the apparatus described in said patent application is not suitable for large-sized warehouses.
On the other hand, given the ever-increasing operating volumes of a laboratory, it is desirable that the storage and subsequent retrieval involves as many samples as possible.